Regulation of the Legal Profession: The Essentials, Third Edition

Stephen Gillers has been a professor of law at New York University School of Law since 1978 and Vice Dean from 1999-2004. He holds the Elihu Root chair. He does most of his research and writing on the regulation of the legal profession. His courses include Regulation of Lawyers, Evidence, and Law and Literature (with University Professor Catharine Stimpson, former dean of the graduate school).

Professor Gillers has written widely on legal and judicial ethics in law reviews and in the legal and popular press. He has taught legal ethics as a visitor at other law schools and has spoken on lawyer regulatory issues at hundreds of events in the U.S. and abroad—often for legal ethics CLE credit—including at federal and state judicial conferences, law firms, corporate general counsel's offices, government law offices, ABA meetings, state and city bar meetings nationwide, in oral and written submissions to Congress, and in law school lectureships. For many years, four or five times each year, he has lectured on legal ethics at the New York City Bar Association CLEs.

Professor Gillers is the author of Regulation of Lawyers: Problems of Law and Ethics, a widely used law school casebook first published by Little, Brown (now Aspen Publishing) in 1985 with a 10th edition forthcoming in 2014. With Roy Simon (and Andrew Perlman as of 2008 and John Steele as of 2015), he has edited Regulation of Lawyers: Statutes and Standards, published annually by Little, Brown, then Aspen Publishing, since 1989. He is also the author of Regulation of the Legal Profession (Aspen Publishing 2009) (the "Essentials" series).

From 2000-2002, Professor Gillers was a member of the ABA’s Multijurisdictional Practice Commission, which proposed rule changes (all of them accepted) to recognize the cross-border nature of legal practice. In 2009, Professor Gillers was selected to be a member of the ABA 2020 Commission (2010-2013), which studied the effects of technology and globalization on the regulation of lawyers, leading to amendments to the Model Rules. He was chair of the Policy Implementation Committee of the ABA’s Center for Professional Responsibility (2004-2008) and was a member from 2002-2010. He was a member of the International Issues Committee of the ABA Section on Legal Education (2008-2009).

In 2011, he received the Michael Franck Award from the ABA’s Center for Professional Responsibility. The Award is given annually for significant contributions to the work of the organized bar, noteworthy scholarly contributions made in academic settings, and creative judicial or legislative initiatives undertaken to advance the professionalism of lawyers.